"On the west side is seen a range of buildings, some of which serve for stores and others for shops. There is one for dressing out the employés; one for fitting out canoes; one in which merchandise is retailed; another where strong drink, bread, lard, butter, and cheese are sold, and where refreshments are given out to arriving voyageurs. This refreshment consists of a white loaf, a half pound of butter, and a quart of rum. The voyageurs give to this liquor store the name 'Cantine Salope.'
"Behind is found still another row of buildings, one of which is used as an office or counting-house, a pretty square building well lighted; another serves as a store; and a third as a prison. The voyageurs give to the last the name 'Pot au beurre.' At the south-east corner is a stone shed roofed with tin. Farther back are the workshops of the carpenters, tinsmiths, blacksmiths, and their spacious courts or sheds for sheltering the canoes, repairing them, and constructing new ones.
"Near the gate of the Fort, which is to the south, are the dwelling-houses of the surgeon and resident clerk. Over the entrance gate a kind of guard-house has been built. As the river is deep enough at its entrance, the Company has had quays built along the Fort as a landing-place for the schooners kept on Lake Superior for transporting peltries, merchandise, and provisions from Fort William to Sault Ste. Marie, and vice versa.
"There are also on the other side of the river a number of houses, all inhabited by old French-Canadian voyageurs, worn out in the service of the North-West Company, without having become richer by it. Fort William is the principal factory of the North-West Company in the interior and a general rendezvous of the partners. The agents of Montreal and the proprietors wintering in the north nearly all assemble here every summer and receive the returns, form expeditions, and discuss the interests of their commerce.
"The employés wintering in the north spend also a portion of the summer at Fort William. They form a great encampment to the west, outside the palisades. Those who are only engaged at Montreal to go to Fort William or to Rainy Lake, and who do not winter in the North, occupy another space on the east side. The former give to the latter the name 'mangeurs de lard.' A remarkable difference is observed between the two camps, which are composed of three or four hundred men each. That of the 'mangeurs de lard' is always very dirty and that of the winterers neat and clean."
But the fur-traders were by no means merely business men. Perhaps never were there assemblages of men who feasted more heartily when the work was done. The Christmas week was a holiday, and sometimes the jollity went to a considerable excess, which was entirely to be expected when the hard life of the voyage was taken into consideration. Whether at Fort William, or in the North-West Company's house in St. Gabriel Street, Montreal, or in later day at Lachine, the festive gatherings of the Nor'-Westers were characterized by extravagance and often by hilarious mirth. The luxuries of the East and West were gathered for these occasions, and offerings to Bacchus were neither of poor quality nor limited in extent. With Scotch story and Jacobite song, intermingled with "La Claire Fontaine" or "Malbrouck s'en va," those lively songs of French Canada, the hours of evening and night passed merrily away.
At times when they had been feasting long into the morning, the traders and clerks would sit down upon the feast-room floor, when one would take the tongs, another the shovel, another the poker, and so on. They would arrange themselves in regular order, as in a boat, and, vigorously rowing, sing a song of the voyage; and loud and long till the early streaks of the east were seen would the rout continue. When the merriment reached such a height as this, ceremony was relaxed, and voyageurs, servants, and attendants were admitted to witness the wild carouse of the wine-heated partners.
We are fortunate in having the daily life of the fur-traders from the Lower St. Lawrence to the very shores of the Pacific Ocean pictured for us by the partners in the "Journals" they have left behind them. Just as the daily records of the monks and others, dreary and uninteresting as many of them at times are, commemorated the events of their time in the "Saxon Chronicle" and gave the material for history, so the journals of the bourgeois, often left unpublished for a generation or two, and the works of some of those who had influence and literary ability enough to issue their stories in the form of books, supply us with the material for reproducing their times. From such sources we intend to give a few sketches of the life of that time.
We desire to express the greatest appreciation of the work of ex-Governor Masson, who is related to the McKenzie and Chaboillez families of that period, and who has published no less than fourteen journals, sketches of the time; of the painstaking writing of an American officer, Dr. Coues, who has with great care and success edited the journals of Alexander Henry, Jr., and such remains as he could obtain of David Thompson, thus supplementing the publication by Charles Lindsey, of Toronto, of an account of Thompson. We acknowledge also the patient collection of material by Tassé in his "Canadiens de L'Ouest," as well as the interesting journals of Harmon and others, which have done us good service.
VALUABLE REMINISCENCES.